


It goes like this

by Fatale (femme)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-12
Updated: 2007-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-27 16:50:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme/pseuds/Fatale





	It goes like this

It goes like this (Barry Manilow's love song)  
Dean/Sam  
PG-13  
WC: 969

 

 

Sam has a lot of thoughts about Dean, but only so much can be realized accompanied by Dean drunkenly singing Barry Manilow.

The first is: Dean drinks too much, and that's his only indulgence in an otherwise Spartan life, and Sam isn't enough of a dick to make a point of it. It never interferes with their work or even their relationship, since Dean usually slinks off to some or someone's bed to sleep it off and only shows up early in the mornings at their hotel room hungover, with bleary red eyes and cigarette smoke in his hair.

The second is: Sam prefers it this way.

They stop in a thrift store a mile out of the city limits, the sun in their eyes and hot on their necks. Just got back from Mexico and loaded up on silver bullets and cheap booze, both favourite forms of celebration for the brothers Winchester.

Seeing it in the back of the crappy store breaks just a little: Old record player, needle and all, dirty and mildewy and still good, but forgotten, just like the dusty road they've followed up this way.

"Get a few t-shirts," Dean grunts, "don't feel like doing laundry."

"I'm washing these before I wear 'em," Sam says, absently pawing through a bin of discarded shirts, while silently eyeing the record player tucked high on a shelf in the corner. How much would Dean kill him for buying it? Why do they still argue about laundry? His head throbs to remembered rock music somewhere in his right temple and he can't make his questions sound like much more than the refrain from an old AC/DC song.

He goes to the back of the store and swipes the player off the shelf. Up close, it looks great, better than great, fucking wonderful and he remembers having one of these in college, something Jessica bought him at a garage sale for $3 with a handful of classic records. He remembers listening to Etta James and Pink Floyd, lying stretched out on the bed next to Jess, her blonde hair fanned out like a halo that covered them both.

"Dude," Dean says, coming up behind him, and Sam braces himself for the inevitable; for Dean's comments about how they don't have the room, what a waste of money it is. Instead, Dean says only, "At least they don't have fuckin' emo rock on vinyl."

 

***

 

He picks up records wherever he can: garage sales, thrift stores, old music shops. And he takes a sort of sordid pleasure in once again cleaning up other people's messes. He's not avenging spirits or laying angry ghosts to rest, he's picking up these small, discarded pieces of their lives and giving them their worth back.

It's by complete accident that he ends up with Barry Manilow. Really.

He paid some $5 for an old Budweiser crate full of records, some great, some not so great, and one Manilow record with faded and fuzzed sleeve edges, but a record inside shiny enough to see himself in.

One night, while Dean's away letting off some steam in a bar, undoubtedly with a cheap blonde, Sam pulls the records out. Maybe, he thinks, it's sheer, dumb curiosity.

Maybe he's a secret masochist that secretly likes to be punished.  
three or four tracks in - Mandy - that Sam realizes this shit isn't half bad. Not half good, but somewhere in between, somewhere he can relate to.

Without warning, the hotel door swings open and Sam thinks about how nice living was and how humiliating his funeral will be when people found out he didn't hear an intruder coming because he was busy listening to Barry Manilow.

He lets his hand relax around the handle of the knife when Dean stumbles through a few seconds later. Mandy is on repeat and Sam's so surprised at seeing Dean before morning, that he forgets to turn it off. _Dear god_ , turn it off before he loses what little respect Dean has for him.

His hands are fumbling with the power cord - _fuck_ \- the on/off switch - when he realizes Dean's singing along, or else what passes for singing when Dean's hit the bottom of a bottle of tequila multiple times in one week.

It may be bad, but it's so shocking, something in Sam gives a little lurch.

Dean sits on his bed and tries to take off his shows with listless, clumsy fingers, all the while slurring softly to the song.

"Goddamn Barry Manilow," he hears Dean mutter, and has to silently agree.

Dean is drunk, and Sam prefers it that way, because he can look fully at Dean without worrying about making them both uncomfortable, without feeling like some kind of crazy pervert if his eyes rest too long on the soft/sharp planes of Dean's body as he jerkily undresses. He prefers it because he needs his space, his time with Dean, but _without_ him. Alcohol smoothes his sharp edges and makes it easier for Sam to understand. Except now, when he's singing along to the best crappy song in the world and Sam feels turned on his ear yet _again_ by someone that enjoys going 90 mph on a 55 road.

He doesn't know quite what to do with it or how to process it; he files it away for later examination when he has the time to take this moment out and twist it every which way like a Rubik's Cube, looking for clues to the right angle. For now, though, he soaks in Dean's presence like he can't ever get enough - and he can't - and that's worse than an army of Barry Manilows and Mandys all at once.

 

 

end.


End file.
